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Dunne, Kurki & Smith: International Relations Theories

Chapter 02

International Relations as Political Theory

• Political theory asks questions such as 'how should we live in political community?', 'what forms of rule are best?', 'what is basis of political obligation?' and 'what is involved in behaving justly to one another?' When these questions are asked international relations are always involved. Thus, International Political Theory (IPT) is a key feature in both Political Theory and International Relations theory.

• The role of IPT has been ignored in IR theory because of the dominance of realism, which sees power and interests as central to international relations and normative issues as irrelevant. However, the state-centric view of international relations has been attacked recently both in IR and in political theory, precipitating the emergence of International Political Theory.

• In reading the classics of political theory we need to keep in mind that interpreting traditions of thought is a complex and contested process. Some would argue that we have to understand the classic texts from ancient Greece, for example, in their specific historical context.

• There are three themes that unite classic and more modern writings in political theory: inside/outside, universal/particular and system/society.

• In all political arrangements a distinction is made between insiders and outsiders but there are numerous ways in which inside/outside can be characterized (territorial states, cities, religion).

• Evaluating the normative implications of insider/outsider status raises the universalism/particularism question: is frame of political obligation local or universalist? For the Greeks loyalties lay within the city states, whereas in Christian Middle Ages, one was also conceived to owe loyalty to the City of God uniting all humans.

• Universalist elements in Christian thinkers lead to the development of the notion of 'Just War', the idea that force could only be used to enforce a just peace that had been disrupted.

• The Renaissance led to the waivering of Christian thought as educated Europeans were re-exposed to classical thought. Crusades also disrupted notions of inside and outside. New relationship between inside and outside arose: one defined by the territorial sovereign state. War, too, became rationalized and humanized. A Westphalian order, based on sovereign territorial states, arose between the 15th and the mid-17th centuries. This order is now global.

• What does this anarchic order of independent states entail? Modern neorealists argue that it constitutes a self-help international system, in which states aim to ensure their own survival. Order is a product of balance of power.

• Others would argue that there is an international society, an association of states that recognizes and values the existence of common rules, particularly diplomacy and international law. This has recently been advocated especially by the English School theorists.

• Immanuel Kant emphasized the notion that for peace to come about states must be republican in character and must support a cosmopolitan right to hospitality. Hegel on the other hand argued that war can be a positive thing, bringing together communities. These thinkers have had an important impact on IPT.

• European notion of international society was explicitly European encompassing only states considered European. Only with the establishment of the UN in 1945 was the principle of non-intervention spread to the rest of the states, however, alongside the notion of human rights.

• Case study. Many people believe we live in an unjust world. Campaigns against world injustice raise interesting questions for IPT. While some realists have rejected the aims for justice beyond state borders, many others have considered international justice desirable. Beyond international justice between states, some have also advocated global distributive justice that takes individual as its reference point.

• Case study continued. There is a distinction between procedural justice that follows right procedures and substantive justice, referring to achievement of a just end result. International law, against the views of some of its forefathers, is generally procedural and takes states as its subjects. Substantive justice has been seen as a matter of domestic communities.

• Case study continued. Rawls was an important theorist of justice. He made radical arguments against inequality within society but assumed societies to be self-contained. However, many would see his position as problematic and aim for substantive economic justice beyond the borders of the state.

• Case study continued. It could be argued that interdependent states are not sufficiently discrete to justify being treated as self-contained entities. Beitz argues that principles of justice should be applied across the globe. Pogge on the other hand argues that rich countries are responsible for the poverty of poor people and hence it is their responsibility to help them.

• Case study continued. A third argument maintains the Kantian principle that all individuals should be respected equally across the globe and that all individuals hold responsibility for other individuals. All these approaches, however, leave open the extent of obligations and their possibly variegated nature.

• Case study continued. Best claim for international justice rather than global justice is, however, still the political defence of pluralism. The benefits of this system should not be ignored by the advocates of global justice.

• This chapter has aimed to provide some key tools from political theory to the study of international relations. There are three key themes that thinkers have positions on: inside/outside, universalism/particularism and system/society. There are two families of disposition: cosmopolitan and communitarian, although these categories are not straightforward in their application to individual thinkers.

• One final important question relates to the rise of globalization. While it seems to undermine communitarian perspectives, it also challenges the assumptions which underlie the cosmopolitan framework. Whatever the potential effects of globalization, it is important to consider international relations in reference to the themes and debates set out by the IPT.